Speaking at a lunchtime seminar at the London School of Economics, Denniss spells out just how massive Australia’s plans are.

He superimposes the footprint of the planned Carmichael mine in Queensland over maps of Kiribati, London and Paris. It dwarfs them all.

Footprint of the Carmichael mine superimposed on a map of Paris (Source: Richard Denniss)

That mine, being developed by Indian conglomerate Adani, is just one of several in the pipeline.

Australia produced 283 million tonnes of coal in 2010, which the government expects to rise to 486Mt in 2016. The total pipeline of planned mines could produce 604Mt a year.

This is Abbott’s job creation strategy, despite the fact less than 1% of the country’s workforce is in coal mining. Denniss calls it “batshit crazy”.

Emissions from this most carbon intensive of fuels would threaten international efforts to limit warming to 2C. Greenpeace estimates Carmichael’s output alone would generate more emissions than Vietnam.

“If we succeed in our ambition of building mines that dwarf European cities, there is no way we are going to tackle climate change,” says Denniss.